By Evie Andreou
OMONIA has complained to the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) after one of its players was subjected to racial abuse during the team’s clash with APOEL on Sunday.
During the match OMONOIA’s Mickaël Poté was provoked by the opposite team’s fans who pretended to be monkeys. When Poté returned the gesture to fans the referee booked him.
However, OMONIA protested the referee failed to protect the player from the racist behaviour and restore order in the stands.
The incident began 68 minutes into the game by APOEL fans seated in the southern stands and spread to the west and east stands. After two minutes of intense provocation, the player mimicked them and then kissed his arm, showing that he had no problem with his colour.
“His decision to punish Mickaël Poté gave the fans with the racist behaviour satisfaction that they achieved their goal,” OMONIA said.
OMONOIA’s press representative Andreas Demetriou said the game’s referee, Demetris Masias, did not register in his report that there was provocation from the fans and now the football club is waiting to see if the referee’s judicator reported it in his.
“Based on CFA’s 2014 disciplinary rules, the referee has the right to interrupt the game in case of racist behaviour… the referee did not record anything in his report, nor did the replacement referee Thomas Mouskos who was standing in the line in front of the southern stands when the racist jeers began,” the club said.
APOEL vice-president Vassos Eliades has condemned the incident and so did player Gustavo Manduca, who posted on social media that what happened at the match was a disgrace.
However OMONIA said they felt they had to respond to APOEL press representative Charalambos Prountzos who wrote on Facebook page that he had not heard any APOEL fans making monkey noises and that OMONOIA reacted in the way it had to direct fans away from the football club’s known problems.
OMONIA is currently in dire financial straits as it has a €20m debt.
“Unfortunately some actions are not aligned with football or APOEL’s history. We condemn it and the club will be called to face the consequences of its fans’ actions,” APOEL spokesman Nekatrios Petevinos said.
He added that APOEL is a member of the FARE network that works with UEFA to tackle racism in football.
“This year we were congratulated by UEFA for our fans’ good behaviour during our team’s European matches. It’s a shame that this effort is overshadowed by such behaviours,” Petevinos said.
One long-time APOEL fan has reportedly said he was present when the incident began and he would name three people that kept calling racist slogans and jeered, and said that if the club does not expel them he will return his season ticket.
What Are Cookies
As is common practice with almost all professional websites, https://cyprus-mail.com (our “Site”) uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.
This document describes what information they gather, how we use it, and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the Site’s functionality.
How We Use Cookies
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
The types of cookies used on this Site can be classified into one of three categories:
- Strictly Necessary Cookies: These are essential in order to enable you to use certain features of the website, such as submitting forms on the website.
- Functionality Cookies: These are used to allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your language) and provide enhanced features to improve your web experience.
- Analytical / Navigation Cookies: These cookies enable the site to function correctly and are used to gather information about how visitors use the site. This information is used to compile reports and help us to improve the site. Cookies gather information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors came from, and the pages they viewed.
Disabling Cookies
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
Third-Party Cookies
In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our Site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the Site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the Site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.
In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.
Learn more about Analytics cookies and privacy information.
Use of IP Addresses
An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this Site and improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information, your IP address does not identify you as an individual.
Your Choice
When you accessed this Site, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our Site, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.
More Information
Hopefully, the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our Site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]